Welcome to the Galway ExploraVision Team's page! We are a group of 5th graders who took on the challenge of "repairing the world through science and innovation." That is the goal of the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision national science competition.
"The ExploraVision program is the largest K-12 science competition designed to build problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills that are central to the Next Generation Science Standards. "
How to repair the world? That seemed like a tall order task, but the team went about it like real world engineers: one step a time. First: we brainstormed.
Then, a straw poll was taken and the decision was unanimous! The team's project became: a self-cleaning drinking water fountain we would later name The Nitinol Accordion.
Then came more and more research and healthy discussions of our ideas for how to make a drinking water fountain self-cleaning: everything from the history of the fountains to possible materials we could use to turn our idea into a real possibility, in other words, a science-based innovation all while keeping in mind, the very strict ExploraVision project requirements. It was a lot of work. We started in October and finished in January! But we never forgot to have fun, and our sense of a team became stronger and stronger each week.
Our snack breaks were legendary!
Then the time finally came to start writing our project. We paired up and each sub-team tackled one aspect of the project. Brielle, Faith and Tam were the main writers while Sam, our tech guy, created the digital prototype of The Nitinol Accordion.
We are super proud of our project. We met every requirement and our deadline!
